


The Absence of Memory

by Narida Law (sarea)



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Colonization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-09-17
Updated: 2000-09-17
Packaged: 2017-10-08 07:17:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/74069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarea/pseuds/Narida%20Law
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Salvation comes in many forms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Absence of Memory

**Author's Note:**

> More than you wanted to know, at the end. But let me first say that this fic is a lot darker than anything else I've written, and all mistakes are mine -- my betas kick ass.

THE ABSENCE OF MEMORY  
by Narida Law

*~*~*

"Plumber" ~~ StoryPeople

The plumber was digging around in the pipes and he saw something shine in the muck and it turned out to be the soul of the last tenant. He gave it to me and I said I wonder how we can return it and he shrugged and said he found stuff like that all the time. You'd be amazed what people lose, he said.

*~*~*

When he sees her he feels his heart sputter and start again, like the engine of an old car that has almost forgotten its use but somehow finds deep in its rusty and beleaguered parts the strength and will for one last trip.

For a single moment the entire universe seems to slow to a stop, so that his eyes can draw her in with the desperation of a parched man at a riverbank, wanting to drink his fill before he can realize that it is only a mirage.

Simultaneously, he dreads the possibility that it could really be her.

He doesn't want it to be; doesn't want to shatter the last hope he has -- that one day soon he will die and join her in a realm vastly dissimilar from the horror of the world in which humanity now lives.

Live.  Such a poorly defined word.  Far too encompassing for the minutiae of meaning concealed in its four-lettered shoal.

In his selfish heart he had hoped her dead.  There had been peace in thinking that she had been spared from the kind of life he knows, the only kind of life she could be living, were she alive.  He had found comfort in believing that she had not suffered as he has ... seen the unspeakable things he has seen, committed the despicable acts that he has committed.

Comfort of any kind is a commodity, so hard to come by that giving it up is like tearing a limb from him.

But perhaps mostly, he does want to be confronted with the man he has become.  The only way he has been able to avoid this is to believe her dead.  To do otherwise would be to think of the man he had once been -- a man worthy of her, and he cannot not bear to think on it, as he can imagine no greater crime than to exist as he is in a world that she inhabits.

He already knows he will not be going to Heaven, where she will surely be, when he dies.  Even before this, he would not have gone there.  But he knows that an eternity in Hell would be bearable if he only could know that she was singing with the seraphim where she belonged.  And if he could hear just the echo of that sound, he would endure the flames licking at his chest with a smile on his face.

At first he doubts his eyes, fooled too many times in days gone by.  It's not really her, he tells himself, alternate variations of hope warring in his heart.  But there is no mistaking the woman in his line of vision -- recognizable not by the magnificent color of her hair or her small, spritely stature, but by the steel rod that serves as her spine.

He finds to his surprise that he still has the ability to care ... if the pressure in his head and chest and his shortness of breath are any indication.  He has not felt those things in a long time.  It is true, then, that the human heart has more resilience than he gave it credit for.

Already he believes.  Already he is convinced.  This time, if it isn't really her, the scab that has hardened from his hairline to the sensitive arch of his foot will be picked away, and his living fluids will run from him.  He is afraid of that much pain.  His skin already feels stretched and tight.

He has forgotten what he once fought for.  He does not know why he fought, or why it was important.  The sun makes the red of her hair glint brightly, like a beacon for him.  He thinks maybe he remembers.  But there is no help for it now. They have taken control; their forces too strong, humanity too weak.

His eyes feel unfamiliarly damp, burning in a sensation long forgotten.  And under the stifling warmth of the desert clime and the usual vapors of fuel, charcoal, sulfur, and smoke, he is suddenly assaulted by the oddity of a seldom-felt presence of wind, which carries with it the peculiar yet unmistakable fragrance of tropical fruit.

========

When he had first been taken, the darkness descended quickly. She had been lost to him, and he, simply lost.  He struggled ineffectually against the overwhelming power that bound him, but there was nothing tangible for him to fight against.  He felt cords strapped around his wrists but could see nothing.  
The more he fought, the tighter his restraints became. Eventually, it was difficult just to breathe, and he had to suck oxygen into his lungs in short, gasping breaths that made them wheeze.

They put him through a sanitation procedure he remembers little of.  But his body remembers the numerous wrongs done to it, remembers convulsing and shuddering under the onslaught of unimaginable pain and terror.

It was the terror that broke the species down.  The human body can withstand extensive amounts of physical suffering, but psychologically, the human mind is frail, easily broken. Take a man from his home, his family, his dog, everything he knows, and his mind gives as much resistance as tumbleweed in the wind.  In the end, he is broken by his knowledge.  His mind congeals with the horror of anticipation.  He understands all too well that his tormentors have their own agenda in which his suffering matters not at all, and that his role in this nightmare is nothing more than the role of the frog he'd dissected in seventh grade biology.  They strip him of his identity, his individualism, and this, more than the physical pain, finally crushes his soul.

He has broken men in his time.  Their spirits do not haunt him.  When they enter the other world, he believes they understand at last that he has done them a good turn.  They leave their brittle, broken bodies behind and rejoin the ones they lost.  The world they have left is not worth their heartache.  They leave all of their earthly memories, and he wishes he could lay his down as well.  He imagines that they pity him, broken so long ago that he has been forgotten completely.

Death brings mercy.

When they finally deemed him ready for his predetermined position in the ranks of colonized Earth, he stared up at the cloudless sky, blinking, marveling at what a cold color blue could be.

He didn't know, couldn't remember, what they had done to him, but knew he wasn't the same.  The faded recollection of a woman with warm eyes and a fiery spirit was branded on his brain, however, and he saw her whenever he closed his eyes. In time, he remembered, and it was more painful than not knowing.

And then he sees her, and remembers that life, as death, is capable of compassion.

========

On the day the world ended, he had done something quite innocuous and not like him at all: he had baked a pie.  No one can truly plan for the end, so it was as good a thing to have done as any.

People all over the world were caught unawares, doing inane things, living their beautiful, nondescript lives.  Perhaps a few were grateful for the relief -- the apocalypse had saved them the trouble of having to kill themselves; some cried when the end came, believing their time on Earth too short and bittersweet; still others looked on the lives they had led, and were grateful for the fleeting moments they had been given.

Everyone has the opportunity to feel one way or another at the end of their lives; it is just rare that so many should have come to feel these things at precisely the same time.

He wore a thumb-sized hint of flour proudly on one cheek as an emblem of duty and valor, and she laughingly kissed it away, replacing the stark-white mark with the moist sweetness of her claim of ownership.

He hadn't made this particular dessert in a long time ... twenty-two years if a day.  It reminded him of gentler days and pleasant, if not happy, memories ... a time when he had just begun to accept the fact of his sister's disappearance and his parents' particular form of not-love.  They hadn't cared what he did or where he went, and so he had escaped. There had been a girl.  A nice, normal girl without the kind of shadows he had been used to, and whose thoughts and ideas had always reflected that fact.

"What was her name?"  The words were nonchalantly spoken, but he was not deceived, as the woman he belonged to was jealous by nature and had a possessive streak the size of Cincinnati. He thrilled to this fact of her.  He had never belonged to anyone before.  At least, not the way she kept him: under her skin, close to her heart.

Smiling in what he hoped was a mysterious manner, he continued to mash bananas, declining to answer.  The sticky gelatinous mess in the bowl winked at him.

She was not one to be satisfied by a non-response, and brought light fingers to his waist, preparing to inflict torment for the answers she sought.  "I want names," she growled, moving her fingers in a way that made his skin convulse.

He leapt high in the air, trying to move away from her.  "I don't know!"  His high-pitched shriek embarrassed him, but only momentarily as the threat had not yet passed, and he was more concerned about her imminent assault.  She did not let up for several moments as he tried to endure with masculine indifference -- and failed miserably.  He bit his lip and tears sprang unbidden to his eyes, wetting his lashes as he wriggled and squirmed from her touch.  The devil of it was that his air of "mystery" had only been a ploy; he honestly could not recall the girl's name.

Taking pity on him, and no small amount of amusement, he was sure, her hands ceased their feather-light touches and applied blissful, normal pressure by holding fast to his waist.

She waited for elaboration.

He sighed in relief, ready to spill his guts if it meant that she would not inflict that particular brand of torture on him again.  "I don't remember her name, but I remember what she told me."  He absently gave the gooey concoction another stir.  "She'd taken her grandmother's recipe, I think, and altered it slightly.  She said that by changing it just a little, it was ... "  He hesitated, knowing he was treading on dangerous ground, with her fingers still on him as they were.  But he bravely concluded, "... ours."

A moment of silence followed, and he moved to casually extricate himself from her grasp, hoping she wouldn't notice. No such luck.  Her hold immediately tightened.

But I don't even remember her name, Scully!

"Mulder, kiss me," she demanded.

He turned in surprise, but in an instant was ready and more than happy to comply.  They lost themselves in the embrace and the room got warmer by degrees until they broke apart, perspiring lightly, each breathing in short pants as if they were in a sauna.

While he continued to stare, enraptured, at her glossy, swollen lips, she took the wooden spoon from his slackened hand and brought it to her mouth, sucking delicately at first, then voraciously when she saw that she had his full attention.  She caught a sliver about to fall with her finger, and lavished her attention on that, as well.  It might as well have been the erection straining against his pants; the effect was the same, and he groaned.  When the spoon had been licked clean, she plunked it back into the bowl, giving it a slight whirl.

"Now it's ours."  Her eyes danced in triumph.

He grinned.  "What did you add?"

"My love," she responded with a smile of her own, reaching up on her toes to kiss him again.  Her tongue slid slowly into his mouth, tasting distinctively of the fruit she had just consumed.

And the man he was lost himself in the woman she was for the last time.

========

The things he was required to do, he once had to steel himself against.  Even after the changes that had been wrought upon him, his stomach had heaved and he had rebelled. His disobedience could not be tolerated, and back he had gone for more "cleansing."  They never erased all of him, no; that would have been far too kind.  Instead, they took pieces.  By the time the effects faded and those parts were returned in Swiss cheese fashion, he had become immune to it all, first out of necessity and then out of indifference.

When he first began performing his duties, swallowing his revulsion and shame, it was the hope of seeing her again that kept him going.  Then as the days wore on and he became unrecognizable even to himself, he no longer hoped for it. Not for it to happen in this world.  His hope changed, to wanting to believe that she had found peace elsewhere and that he would soon be able to join her in an afterlife, though they be in different spheres.

He suffered in ways that were unfathomable to those who had never been in his place.  The Test Subjects didn't understand and didn't want to; they knew only that he was the one who stripped them of their clothes, of their freedom, of their lives.  In the beginning, he had to keep from shouting that they were the lucky ones, that after a finite amount of suffering they were able to join the ones they loved in eternity ... their time in hell on earth was limited.  They could see an end.  His own agony was incessant.  There was no relief for him.

It was probably not impossible to commit suicide, but after several interrupted attempts and revisits to the sanitation chamber, he was watched carefully.  And to go through the trouble of planning a covert, complicated suicide required levels of attentiveness and enterprise that he no longer had. Hanging himself would have done the trick nicely, but he was foiled and couldn't shed his apathy long enough to try again. He simply waited for his time to arrive, showing a patience he had never possessed in the Other Time.  The best things in life are worth waiting for, he remembered, not without a sense of irony.  He hoped that it would be soon.

He was still alive because they would not let him die.

========

He had supervised the sanitation procedures.

What twist of fate had brought them to this sector, so that he was the one to order the dismantling of their humanity? But he was simply doing his job; a job he did day after day, week after week, month after month, until time had become irrelevant.  Until he himself had become irrelevant, and he didn't have to care anymore.

He had not recognized them at first, the oddity of their combined presence striking him no more than the other assortment of naked human beings he had seen in the same situation.  What would have been bizarre, out of place, for his old self, was now typical, run-of-the-mill.  It was all part of the regular procedures.

Three men -- two of average height, the third almost dwarf-like.  All three sported shaggy, unkempt beards.  A blonde, a brunette, and the last, smaller man, had hair a few shades darker than his own, only streaked with white.  They would all be shaved.

Their bodies were a sickly, pale white, very unlike his own bronzed skin, pigmented from blazing afternoons of District patrol.  None too surprising, as they had been found hiding underground in one of the pesky man-made escape tunnels. Probably, they had not seen the sun in weeks, possibly months.

He could have told them: There is no escape.  Not in threatening, ominous tones, but in a voice of calm resignation and reason.  They will find you.

He wondered why they bothered.  Even the strongest person he had ever known had not been able to withstand ... the strongest--

His composure cracked for a moment as he remembered her, the small breach letting in other buried emotions, feelings, memories.  The pain flooding in from even that small opening was almost more than he could withstand, the unbearable hurt nearly bringing him to his knees.

Out of long practice, he sealed it again, and was angry.

That was when he noticed they were angry too.  Pure malevolence directed toward him that astounded him, gave him pause.  He was used to the TS fear, resentment, loathing, and envy of him -- as a Regulator, not only was he the one to order the commencement of their torture, and in their eyes, did not suffer what they suffered -- but these men hated him out of familiarity, he realized.  It was a direct hatred, a personal abhorrence.  They knew him.

He knew them.

For just a moment, that small fissure in the emotional barricade his experiences had built opened again, and he felt a forgotten wetness sting his eyes, and the inside of his throat was swollen, as though stung by a swarm of insects.

They called him names, cutting syllables that were meant to draw blood, but words no longer had the power to affect him. He thought dully that if things had been different, he would have been there with them, naked and shouting ineffectual insults at a shell of a man.  And with their eyes, they stripped him of his crown of thistle and replaced it with a pair of horns ...

"TS-1," he said without inflection, allotting the subjects' test tier, and the orderlies rushed to prepare the men.

The blonde man spat in his direction, the spittle landing two feet from where he stood.  He stared down, looking at it, feeling it on his face, even as the blonde was punished for his trouble.

They had once been his friends, but now they were nothing more than experimental fodder.

And he could do nothing.

========

He is twice a father, but has never been called by his paternal title.  He has never had that privilege; never been able to claim that right.  She could say it but she never does.  Nor would he think to call her by her rightful maternal title, either.  Those sounds uttered by the wrong voices -- any voice not gurgling, small, and artless -- would slice through them like a jagged pieces of glass, leaving them raw and bleeding.

He is two times a father, yet he has never felt sticky little fingers on his face, leaving traces of marmalade on his early-morning beard.  He has never breathed in the deep, sweet smell that babies have, or fallen asleep with his progeny lying on his chest, lifting and falling with every breath that he takes.

He has never seen his children nurse at their mother's breast nor seen her rock them to sleep.  He has never been able to call her the mother of his children except in his head.

But he knows.  His aching heart, his red, dry eyes, and the weariness that draws on his bones like a mosquito seeking a fresh supply of red iron, these and a thousand invisible, tiny cuts are the evidence of his knowledge.

========

"Know what I can do with a banana, Mulder?" she had asked, a smirk on her face.  She peeled the banana methodically, pulling the strips of splotchy yellow leather down with precise care.  She then proceeded to do naughty things with her mouth to the fruit that had him sweating in his "Love the Chef" apron, until he growled and lunged for her.

She had let herself be caught, laughing like he remembered his teenage girl friends laughing twenty-five years ago, as if the most important thing in the world was that the recipient of her smile appreciated it the way it deserved to be appreciated.

He did.

Three hours later, worlds would collide, effectuating the transformation of the human race into a species whose transcendent egotism could not save them from the galling yoke of servitude.

In the quiet, waning moments of what little time there was left, two people celebrated the lives they had no idea they were about to lose.

The air was heavy and ripe with the heat from the oven and the sweet, pungent scent of bananas.

========

They need nothing but this gentle storm, riding the breaking waves like small sea creatures helplessly caught up in the tide.  The experience is salty, and damp, and in the moment just before they are calmed by the refreshing tide of pleasure, they remember all that has happened to them, and the agony is almost crippling.  But the moment passes, and their minds are made blissfully void of everything but this one moment.  The blankness washes over them, cooling their heated skin, guiding them to shore while their fingertips linger and glisten.

========

They had thought her barren.

In the Other Time they had mourned this loss, slipped it into personal hollows where deep-seated dreams and a thousand heartaches dwelled.  It was a promise never to be fulfilled, a question that had a multitude of timbres but no answer.

But they should have kept their bone-deep sobs, their prickly tears, their personal ache in the moonlight of their bed. There is nothing more empty and bitter than mourning a lie.

Or perhaps there is.

He is twice a father.

========

Everyday, he picks her up from the testing facilities.  She is "lucky"; the TS-1 never leave the facilities at all.  But of course, considering who and what she had been in the Other Time, it is not surprising at all that she is TS-3.  He completes his rounds with barely concealed impatience, and those who work under him have learned to hurry their final duties of the day.

He always arrives in plenty of time, but the next day he hurries once again.  He wants to be there when she steps out of that building, her eyes squinting in her pale face, the rays of a sun she sees too little of burning her retinas.  He knows that he is the only thing she wants to see after a session; she wants that almost as much as he does.

Her eyes light on him waiting just beyond the boundaries of the facility, and he holds her gaze steadily.  He suspects that sometimes, it is this sole connection that gives her the strength to cross the distance between them, not more than twenty feet, into his waiting arms.  His greatest fear is that one day he will be late, completing unimportant rounds, and he won't be there for her, and she will have collapsed to the ground and it will be his fault.  She is why he lives, and nothing can force him to disappoint or fail her.  Not now, when society has crumbled, and all the excess in their lives has been divested.  All that is left are the most important things.

He knows what it costs her to appear weak, to cede control, to confess to frailty.  He knows, and hates Them all the more.  Hates himself all the more.  She feebly protests against his feelings of self-recrimination, and he nods and acquiesces, knowing that it is important to her that he not blame himself.  He knows that she doesn't have the strength to argue with him and should preserve the strength she does have, but inside he boils with the acid of knowing that in this life, he has already failed to deserve her by doing the things he has done.

He looks on her as the greatest gift he has ever received; one that he has done nothing to deserve, one he will protect and preserve at all costs.

Each time, less of her is returned to him.  She is dying slowly, and he fades with her.

The sun, too, feels colder each day.  Something is happening. The days no longer get as warm as they used to, the ground seems perpetually frozen, as everything around him loses color and heat.

He doesn't want her to die.  Nor does he want this life for her.  He is torn over selfish desire and his reason for living.

Her horror is such that she will not speak of it, and draws into herself whenever he tries.  He feels helpless, useless, as if he is an appendage that brings her more grief than comfort.

The coldness is so penetrating that it sometimes overtakes their bed and turns it into an icebox.  All he can do is draw her into his arms and hold her close, trying to keep the coldness at bay.  He tries to warm her, warm them, but the cold greedily saps what little warmth he can generate, and he can only clutch her thin shoulders as she shivers.

During these times he is overwhelmed by futility, by despair, by the impotent rage searing his veins like hot coals.  He wants to spirit her away to a warm place where no horror can touch her, where he can sit in a shady grove with a lazy smile on his face as she laughs and glides through the grassy fields, so light that she actually floats.

He waits for the something to happen.

========

"What is this?"  Three short words, infused with such anger, such emotion.  Panic encapsulates him.

She remains silent.

"I asked you what the hell this is!"  He shoves the scrap of material in front of her face, as if she has somehow missed the streaks of blood etched there like a melted rose petal.

He has seen these marks before, on TS-2 subjects -- all women -- shortly before they died.  It is the result of a new experiment, a flag signaling destruction.  He is afraid that the TS-3 subjects will be next, and has been religiously checking her undergarments for signs of the new illness.

He hasn't told her, not wanting to scare her, but his fear is palpable in the room, like an avalanche waiting to crush them where they stand.  Perhaps he is most afraid that she has been keeping it from him.

A single tear slides down her cheek, and he knows not from where it came, for her eyes are dry as she meets his unrelenting gaze with ferocity of her own.

"Dammit!"  His terror is overwhelming him, and he struggles under its agonizing pressure, his chest tightening and expanding at the same time.  He finds it difficult to breathe.

She speaks, but her voice is so quiet and the blood pounding in his ears so loud that he asks her to repeat herself.

"I said I'm not pregnant again.  I'm on my period.  And you're scaring me."  Now her eyes are wide and bright, her lips trembling just slightly, the only sign of her distress.

Oh God oh God oh God.  He is such a fucking asshole.  Hanging his head in shame, he takes several deep breaths.  Dare he try to hold her?  His arms hang limply by his side, but he brings them up to press his face to his hands.

He feels her arms going around him, and he is stunned by the depth of her generosity, her love.  He crushes her to him, so hard that she resists at first, then collapses against him as though her bones can no longer support her slight weight.  He is ashamed.

Then she begins to hit him, thrashing in his arms like a wild woman, striking him with her fists, her elbows, anything she can use to inflict physical injury.  He is startled but accepts his punishment, holding her up so that she can reach him.  After the frenzy, she attacks his mouth with her own, shoving her tongue inside, grinding her teeth against his and pressing hard, as if she wants to be swallowed by him.

He tackles her to the bed, kissing her with bruising force and making love to her as if the universe is hanging in the balance, as if by doing so he will be able to imbue her with his restored strength, with his fierce passion to live.

When she is riding high above him, her hair brushing his knees like talons of copper, it allows them to forget, lets time and memories slide away until it is solely them, their fluids and their feelings, all their senses alive with the moment of being.  They touch one another with the soft, desperate need that characterizes so many of their unions, their own path of fire.

They cannot give this up, no matter what is stolen from them at a future date.  They live in the present, for it is all they have.  All they have left to give.

And when their memories are silenced, love and passion barring those doors for a scant few moments, they remember why it is they still live.

========

"I have something for you," she says softly, her voice a whisper treading lightly on the stillness of the room, like an angel learning to use its wings.

He doesn't answer, waiting for her to share, waiting on the promise of her voice, her eyes, the curve of her lip.

He takes the small vial from her hand, tilting it to the light, watching the small scrap of metal inside slide from one end to the other with a flick of his wrist.  Such a small thing.  Such a small thing to bring so much hurt, so much sorrow, so much anger and hopelessness.

Tears kiss his eyelashes and then his face, their silent appearance unnoticed by him.  He does not, however, miss the ones shining in her eyes, magnifying the deep blue of her eyes tenfold.  He doesn't remember the last time she looked this beautiful.

"Now I'm free," she whispers, smiling faintly, the words crushing his heart and making it whole again in the same instant, because he knows what he has lost.  He knows what he has gained.  It is a sentiment he himself shared an eternity ago, when the future was still unknown.  When hope was a privilege, not a curse.

He wants to ask her what it means, wants to have her spell it out for him, but he is afraid of the actual words.  It is her gift to him, and he bites his lip, knowing he cannot question this particular bequest.  It is not his place.  But he can cry, and he can love, and so he does both.

It aches not to be holding her, and it must ache for her too, for suddenly she is in his arms, soothing the burning in his chest, murmuring promises of forever in his ear, promises of joy and forgiveness and the truth of being together.

She presses a plastic bag filled with little white tablets into his hand.

He will do this for her because he loves her, because he is the only one she can trust to give her this peace.  She tells him that she and the children they have never met will be waiting for him when he arrives.  Very, very soon, they will be a family.

========

At long last, he sees the end of one journey and the start of another.

Contrary to popular opinion, it is not a place lacking in joy.  Nor it is a state of nothingness, though inhibitions, fear, doubt, and pain no longer exist.

It is freedom in its purest form.

It is a place he can forget the horrors he has seen, been a part of, and done.  There, the things that matter are preserved, including the parts of himself that made him human, that made him a man worthy of an extraordinary woman's love.

It is a time when love can unite and be reborn, when children can see for the first time the unfamiliar, precious faces of their parents, and when the celebration of life is not confined to the seclusion of fleeting recollections, but instead, thrives in the very absence of memory.

========

He places the small dish of gruel in front of her, an equal portion on the plate he sets in front of himself.  It is the usual thick paste, full of vitamins and nutrients but no flavor.  They have added their own flavoring to this meal, and it will go down easily.

The scent of bananas wafts in the air, a fragrance they have never forgotten.

"What did you add?" she asks softly, sensing that this is no ordinary meal.

He knows what she is asking -- if he has finally made himself worthy of her.

"My love," he responds simply, and she smiles.

And they are secure in the certainty that the memories of these times will fade like the heat of breath on a cold surface, leaving no part of themselves behind.

*~*~*

"Hard to Forget" ~~ StoryPeople

I was waiting for such a long time, she said. I thought you forgot. It's hard to forget I said, when there is such an empty space when you are gone.

*~*~*

**Author's Note:**

> All my beta thanks go to Brandon and Trixie, my fellow Fallen Angels. Thank you, thank you, dahlings!! When I was first batting around title ideas, I came up with this one and Trixie said it reminded her too much of Jewel's "Absence of Fear." I wasn't familiar with the song, so the similarity didn't bother me. Then Trix contributed her kickass beta services (which included making me change my favorite part), at the end of which, she pasted in the lyrics to "Absence of Fear." Apparently, I have inadvertently written songfic. $*@#~*! Oh well.
> 
> And now for the story behind the story. This was my first attempt at improv, so please handle this newbie with kid  
> gloves. I'd avoided it since learning there was such a thing, because the idea scares me shitless. I did it this  
> time because I felt honor-bound to do my part in our improv "pact." (I told Trix and Brandon that if we had to do  
> another one soon, though, I'd have to check myself into a mental institution.)
> 
> I brought it upon myself, since I was the one with the big mouth who said that it would be next to impossible to write a serious fic from "ridiculous elements." Brandon said that it wasn't, and challenged Trix and I to come up with elements that we deemed "ridiculous" and he'd write a serious fic, within a certain timeframe. One of the clauses, however, was that if he was successful, Trix and I would also have to write improvs under the same rules.
> 
> I'm the last, and I have to say that I feared I'd get the brunt of it. But I think they took pity on my pasty face at  
> the sound of "improv" and went easy on me. Thanks, guys. :-)
> 
> And after that long preamble, my required elements:
> 
> 1\. Mulder, with his own two hands, bakes Scully a banana cream pie, the recipe for which is somehow related to an ex-  
> flame. (Trixie)
> 
> 2\. Scully gives Mulder a gift that brings them both to tears. (Trixie)
> 
> 3\. Mulder. Obsession. Scully's undergarments. Combine. (Trixie)
> 
> 4\. At least one character in the story who is NOT a Lone Gunman, sees all three of the LGM naked. (Brandon)
> 
> 5\. Scully exhibits romantic jealousy of Mulder. (Brandon)
> 
> 6\. At least part of the story is set post-Colonization. (Brandon)
> 
> If you haven't already, check out the improvs by my lovely co-conspirators, both of whom are much braver (read: didn't  
> try to squirm out of doing this) and more talented than I.
> 
> "O My God" by Brandon Ray  
> http://www.avalon.net/~publius/OMyGod.html
> 
> "Distance to Touch Upon" by Trixie  
> http://www.crosswinds.net/~trixie1013/distancetotouchupon.txt


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